RFID Survey Shows Libraries Don't Know WHAT They're Using

Mick Fortune has released the first results of this year's RFID survey. Mick does this survey every year in the UK.  This year, Alan Butters (Australia) and I asked Mick to try for a global reach with the survey and we succeeded.  The survey includes respondents from several countries around the world and include over 50 libraries from the U.S. and over 50 from Australia.

I've pulled out a couple items from Mick's post that I think are (or should be) of particular interest to my U.S. readership:

1. 3M and Bibliotheca are the biggest RFID players in the library market.  Another biggie is FE Technologies but only in Australia.
2. Some libraries are using UHF tags but most are using HF tags.  Most troubling is that, by far, most respondents don't know the type of tags they are using.
3. Respondents also don't know whether they are using ISO 28560 and even more don't know if they are using ISO 28560-2 or ISO 28560-3.

So, if you are reading this and thinking...."Hmmmm, I wonder what that means.  I don't know about that either!?   I hope you will click on my RFID page and educate yourself. It's time for everyone to start paying attention to this issue and stop letting your RFID vendor make all the decisions.

Here's the issue:  ISO 28560 is the standard that is going to help move RFID from a vendor-specific "solution" to one interoperable tool in your library's toolbag.  And I bet you know that "tools" are cheaper than "solutions."  And that's just one of many benefits.  

I hope you will start paying attention to this standards issue and put pressure on your vendor to support ISO 28560 (specifically ISO 28560-2 for the US) because pretty soon I'm going to start talking about another complicated issue:  SIP3 versus BLCF....but I"ll save that for another post.